Spotify has announced that independent artists will be able to self-upload their music directly to the platform.

Spotify has today introduced a new feature which will allow indie artists to self-upload their music directly to the streaming platform. Effectively bypassing third-parties or record labels, artists will also be able to track their earnings via the Spotify for Artists royalties dashboard.

Whilst the feature is currently in invite-only beta mode, Spotify has suggested that in the coming months, more artists and teams will have access to the feature.

The news follows Spotify CEO Daniel Ek’s statement of intent to build a “two-sided marketplace” which serves both consumers and musicians. With over 20,000 tracks added to the platform every day, Ek claimed that Spotify’s “goal is to get as much music onto the Spotify platform as we possibly can”.

Third-party digital aggregators and distributors, such as CD Baby, Ditto and TuneCore already offer a service to upload to all streaming platforms, in return for a yearly subscription fee. At the same time, Spotify steps into the realms of Soundcloud, which to date has been the popular go to space for user-uploaded music content. Perhaps causing concern for its newly found competitors, Spotify has also announced that it won’t be charged artists any upfront feeds for uploads, nor will they take extra commission on the self-uploaded tracks.

Once again absorbing costs in return for a user base increase, Spotify has extended its freemium approach to the artist. Having recently launched a new feature which allows artists and labels to submit tracks to its in-house team of curators for playlist consideration, it is clear that Spotify is looking to cut out distributors.

Whilst there is potential for self-uploaded tracks to enjoy influential playlist exposure, it will be interesting to see whether artists opt to forgo the benefit of distributor and publishing expertise. We are also eager to see how Daniel Ek and co will manage the quality of content uploaded to the platform. If Spotify can encourage quality independent music to be uploaded directly to the service, it could reap the rewards of exponential user growth.

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